Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs's stepping down as CEO of Apple raises of a lot of interesting questions in technology and the history of technology. News accounts have reported a great deal of affection for Steve Jobs, probably more than any other business man of our time. Why do we feel so passionately about him? We probably couldn't even name the CEO of other companies like IBM or Microsoft or even Google. It is interesting that Jobs was not a typical engineer and had more of a liberal arts background than an engineering background. (How many engineers would think to attack a competitors product by saying "it had no poetry"? Here is a story about Jobs's passion for detail. Here is an anecdote from a reporter about Jobs. Here is a story from Fortune Magazine about Steve Jobs and how Apple works. Here is a description of some of his patents. Here is Jobs's introduction of the MAC in 1984--the crowd reaction gives you a sense of how radical it was for its time. Here is an early side by side look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Also here is a classic: Steve Jobs's 2005 commencement speech at Stanford University.

One interesting theory about the reason Jobs stepped down is that he did so to make sure that Tim Cook the new CEO didn't leave to go to another company. This theory says that as long as Tim Cook was just the acting CEO, other companies would try to lure him away from Apple and with Jobs stepping down, Tim Cook is less likely to be tempted away from Apple. One piece of evidence in support of this theory is that Apple granted Tim Cook options for 1 million shares of Apple stock (worth a third of a billion dollars) with one hitch: Cook has to stay around for ten years. So the story behind Steve Jobs's stepping down from Apple may not be that Steve Jobs is irreplaceable, but that Apple doesn't want to lose a very competent, but less charismatic leader.

Hurricanes, Walmart and Information--Run out and Get Strawberry Poptarts!

I said in class this week that I relate everything to the history of technology and themes in technology. What do I think of when I think of Hurricane Irene? Information!! A major theme in America today is applying information technology to every part of society, to every issue, from getting a parking space, to hurricanes. Besides the detailed forecasts and information we now can follow minute by minute about a hurricane's path, information is a part of this story in other ways. Walmart applies its information technology to understand what people buy when a hurricane hits (or before a hurricane hits and after it hits.) Walmart has a massive amount of data which tells it what people buy when. (In 2004, the New York Times reported that Walmart's computer center held twice as much data as the Internet at that time.) So they can see what people have bought during previous hurricanes and make sure that they have those items at stores in the path of a hurricane. It turns out that there is a huge spike in the sale of strawberry poptarts before a hurricane. (Also, not surprisingly, beer.) Here is another piece about this trend.

The Start-Up of You

Thomas Friedman always has a lot of provocative things to say about how technology is shaping our future. In July he had a piece talking about how young people should be preparing for the future. It's called "The Start-Up of You," and his basic claim is that those in college may need to invent their own jobs. He says that big companies aren't now (and probably won't ever) going to hire thousand of thousands of engineers. Instead they are looking for small numbers of very talented engineers who can add value to their company every day, every hour. The point about needing to invent your own job is an important one for college students. It's possible to see this as a good thing, rather than a bad thing. Instead of having to be shoehorned into a job that some big company has, that you don't care for, you can invent a job that is suited to your talents and passions. That means you should spend you college years purposefully, finding out what you are good at, what your passions are, and how you can use those skills and passions for society.

Paradigm Shifts

In class we will be talking about paradigm shifts. These can be rather trivial things (replacing a stop light with a traffic circle) or something far more dramatic. In the last year or so, Jeremy Grantham, an investor who manages something more than $100 billion, has been making the case that the world in on the cusp of a huge paradigm change, and to him its not a good one. In a very long newsletter article, he makes the case that we have lived in a world where natural resources (oil, steel, fertilizer, almost any stuff) has been cheap and gets cheaper. He argues that this era is coming to an end, and that resources are going to get more expensive. He sees this happening for a number of reasons. Most basically, he would say that no compound growth rate is sustainable forever and our society has been predicated on growth. One example of this, is his chart of increase in agricultural yields:


His point here is that it is getting harder and harder to increase our agricultural yields to keep up with population growth.

With more and more people in the world (i.e. the aspiring middle class in India and China), able to live a life that uses something on the order of magnitude of the resources we use, resources will be under increasing pressure. One of his most striking statistics is China's share of various resources:


A couple of things to note about his argument. It is undeniably true that we in the US live in a world based on the paradigm of cheap resources/material. Look in your garbage can if you don't believe it. Grantham is an investor, and he believes that global warming (which he does not doubt exists) can only be addressed if it can be made an economic issue. Here is a further piece about Grantham.